This seems like quite a unique product. It is small yet produces a good depth and range of sound from built in speakers. If your musical tastes are not the same as others then it can be used with headphones.
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It is described as a Personal Sound System, it consists of an FM radio and MP3 player.
Blue grey in colour and about the size of a good sized banana, either end are the two speakers with a monochrome display in the centre, there are a total of ten buttons either side of the display and on top of it to control the output. Behind a lift up door on the rear are four sockets, DC in, mini USB, Line In and a combined aerial headphone socket.
Now the dimensions, a little difficult as it is slightly curved 18x5.5x5cm and it weights 350grams. It is described as light and easy to carry, it will fit easily in the palm of your hand. All just about true, dependant on your hand size.
The speakers are small but do deliver a good output, so far almost everything is a positive, now the MP3 part, there is only 256MB and this is only four hours of playback certainly not enough for most people. Yes if you are a fan of WMA then this figure doubles but with the memory side of things being so cheap today why not make it a GB and that would give 16/32 hours of playback.
It can be used as a very small alarm unit suitable when you go away. A very nice travelling pouch is provided. It can run on mains or the internal rechargeable battery but 10 hours is not huge for battery life, acceptable, but not outstanding.
The monochrome 2.7x2.2cm display is clear and easy to read, so much so, that up to six lines of text can be displayed.
While I had the wire antennae attached I found it easy to get a good FM signal this was not the same when using headphones and you really needed to be stationery to get anything acceptable. Speech was just about okay through the supplied earbuds certainly I would not like to listen to radio music for any length of time with them.
This is an innovative product and as such you must emphasize the positives. The very small speakers give an amazing range and depth of sound. When static listening to music from the radio is fine with the wire antennae but not good with the earbuds. The MP3/WMA capacity is not enough today, maybe some months ago but now people expect far more.
Transferring files is via a recent (version 9) adapted copy of Music Match badged Philips. However here I again find myself regressing as the USB interface is only USB 1.1 and therefore file transfer is not that rapid.
I would love to be able to sat well done to Philips for what seems to be another innovative product however, I am left with whys, Small amount of memory, USB 1.1, poor radio reception on the move. Given that all the radio talk is about DAB why FM?
The likely price is around £99.99 and while the whys are there I think although there are positives it is not there, maybe version 2?
http://www.consumer.philips.com/ProductDetail.go?CTN=PSS110/00
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